Honda Announces It Will Go Fully Electric By 2040

Japanese auto giant Honda is the latest manufacturer to announce plans to go full electric. It released a statement on Friday that it aims to have its entire vehicle line-up to generate zero emissions by 2040, with both hydrogen fuel cells and batteries playing a big part. The target date is later than that of some rival automakers, like Cadillac which also revealed last week that it will go fully electric by 2030. Jaguar has the most ambitious target, having set itself a deadline of 2025.

Honda has been lagging behind its competitors when it comes to EVs. The Clarity Electric from a couple of years back only had around 140 kms of range or so. Honda will launch a new EV in North America in 2024, by way of General Motors. In a deal announced in 2020, GM will be building two EVs based on its Ultium platform for Honda with one of them being an Acura. Both vehicles are expected to be large crossovers.

Post-2025, Honda will launch additional EVs which will be based on an in-house developed platform dubbed e: Architecture. With the addition of these EVs along with those based on the Ultium platform by GM, Honda predicts that 40% of its lineup in North America will be electric by 2030.

Honda has also stated that it plans to deploy vehicles with solid-state batteries before the end of this decade. The technology, which is being developed by Honda has the potential to dramatically increase the capacity of batteries while lowering the cost in comparison to the liquid-type batteries in current EVs. The automaker has stated that it will start the production of solid-state batteries as early as this year.